


September, Revisited

by ottermo



Series: Fandot Creativity [9]
Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Fandot Creativity, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-10-01 08:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10184750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Prompt fills from the 23rd Fandot Creativity Night (September 2016)So far: World War 2 Martin has a bad dream, Carolyn gets a haircut, Douglas shows off a secret talent, we wallow in some post-Zurich feelings (what else is new), Snoop goes to the vet, and the OJS team strike up a brand new tradition.





	1. Blanket/Before

 

Before the war, Martin hardly ever had nightmares. Or if he did, they weren’t the sort you remembered in the morning. Not the sort that shook you awake in the night, either, heart thumping and frantically trying to steady your breathing, so you wouldn’t wake anybody up.

He thinks he’s managed it, but then there’s a little click and a circle of light appears on the wall. Arthur rolls over and shines it in Martin’s direction, the little ring of golden yellow picking out his wide eyes and the way his hands are trembling.

Quickly Arthur sits up. “Are you all right? Did you have a bad dream?”

Martin nods as if the answer is yes to both, not one.

“What happened in it?”

The question is so blunt, so curious, no ‘if you think it would help to talk about it’, but also no, 'hurry up and get it out so we can both go back to sleep.’ Martin likes that about Arthur. What you see is what you get. (Or at least, during a blackout, what you hear is what you get.)

“My dad,” says Martin, voice small and unsteady. “I saw his plane come down. There was a lot of shooting.”

“How do you know it was his plane? Maybe it was someone else.”

“Maybe,” Martin murmurs. He doesn’t know how to explain to Arthur that he knew it was his dad, in that way you just know things in dreams. It’s always his dad’s plane, in every dream since the night he left.

There’s some shuffling, but the torch drops on the floor so Martin can’t see what Arthur’s doing - just a little yellow crescent on the carpet where the torch has fallen. When Arthur picks it up, Martin can see that he’s holding a blanket. Within a few moments it’s draped around Martin’s shoulders, soft and warm.

“That’s my best one,” Arthur whispers. “It’ll keep the nightmares out, it always does.”

Martin isn’t sure that’s how it works, but he whispers back, “Thanks.”

In the morning, he finds the blanket still around his shoulders, and his eyelids heavy from a long, sound sleep.

 


	2. Hair

 

She chose a salon she knew was staffed exclusively by recent immigrants: they always did a good job, and they were the only ones who could be relied upon not to talk her ear off about package holidays and celebrity scandals. She had no space in her brain to pretend to care about chit-chat: she was too busy revelling in a tremendous sense of renewal.

“Your hair,” Gordon had drawled, one night in their first year of marriage. “That’s what I noticed first. All down your back, it was. I thought, I’ll buy that girl a drink if her face is half as good.”

Carolyn leaned back in the hairdresser’s chair and listened to the snip, snip, snip of the scissors, watched as long strands of her past fell to the floor. The skilful hands of the woman behind her built a new shape around Carolyn’s face, fresh and close and determined, and nothing Gordon Shappey would look at twice.

Just the way she liked it.

 


	3. Shadow

 

Among his many talents: shadow puppets. It was something Douglas had mastered as a child, acting out stories on the walls of the bedroom he shared with his brother, in which the dashing hero always rescued whichever royal was in distress (princes crept in among the princesses as he grew - ‘heirs to the kingdom’ came later still). Philip, a few years older and desperate not to be too impressed by most things his younger brother did, couldn’t pretend he wasn’t fascinated, sometimes leaned over to check that Douglas wasn’t using anything other than his hands to create the shadowy shapes.

Years afterwards, his daughter became the audience. She never asked for books at bedtime, begged instead that the shadows could dance. Douglas picked out tales of ballerinas, unicorns, the tooth fairy. Sometimes, when she wasn’t too tired, Verity would narrate the story herself, her father’s fingers deftly moving to keep up with the words, creating the characters so vividly in silhouette that it never mattered that they didn’t have faces: they were just as real. Douglas found a secret, bitter pleasure in the knowledge that neither of the stepfathers who came along could ever match him in this, whatever else they brought to the table.

“I know I’m too old,” she said, once, thirteen years old and peeping soulfully out from under a freshly-cut fringe. “But do you think I could have shadow puppets tonight? I just… I dunno. I miss them.”

Douglas sat down on the guest-bed he’d made up for her, and switched on the lamp he’d already angled perfectly, just in case. “You’re never too old,” he said, and lifted his hands.

Late one night in an accidentally singular-not-plural hotel room, Arthur noticed movement on the wall opposite and exclaimed, “Wow! Skip, look! That shadow looks exactly like a polar bear!”

Douglas smiled, and made it walk.

 


	4. Decision

 

For the first weeks, it’s like an upward soar, but it plateaus, and starts to fall. Not that the job or the money or the proximity to his girlfriend get old, they don’t. It’s all great. He has no right to be unhappy, he tells himself, no right at all. So he pastes on a smile and tries not to think about the fact that the people in his life only buy it because they don’t really know him at all.

Except Theresa. She slides between the streets next to him one night, and says, softly, “It’s not too late, Martin. This… doesn’t have to be forever.”

He puts an arm around her, pulls her closer. If only so he can say into her hair, not her eyes, “It is. I made my decision.”

“You can unmake it.” Her voice is steely and determined, accented vibrations against his chest that make him remember the dragonslayer she was when they first met. “You’re not happy here. Not like you used to be.”

Martin breathes, considers. “You make me happy,” he says, truthfully.

“I’d make you happier if we were in Fitton,” she says. “You know it’s true.”

“It’s too late. My job’s gone to somebody else. And the money…”

“Rotating shifts. A second plane, just for service to House Gustava. Maxi would pay for everything, we just have to tell him how awful it is for him to fly to school on the same seat that commoners sit in.”

Martin can’t help but smile. As unlikely as the idea is, one thing he learnt from his time at MJN was that nothing’s too improbable when Douglas is around. Douglas and Theresa together are all but omnipotent.

But whacky ideas aside, it’s good to remember that somebody knows him here, that if it’s forever then it isn’t so bad.

 


	5. Animal/Relieved

 

She’d been, briefly, relieved to know that there was nothing wrong with Snoopadoop after all: Herc’s assertions of soppiness aside, she did love the animal, and had hated the uncertainty almost as much as she hated waiting in the vet’s waiting room, surrounded by cats scratching at their carry-cages and children snuffling over sickly guinea-pigs and fish with wonky fins.

But relief had quickly turned to despair when she realised the full set of implications - exactly how much work would be involved, and how much well-meaning hindrance Arthur would provide.

Once the puppies arrived, though, Carolyn could hardly believe she’d been worried. They were so tiny and perfect - the only problem she could foresee was having to give any of them up.

“Go on then,” she said to Arthur, watching him gaze wistfully at the tiny trio from the edge of Snoop’s basket. “You can name them.”

If there was anything that might break the temptation to keep them all, it was the thought of having to yell, “Snoopadoop! Tinkerbell! Razzmatazz! Skippadip!” across the field in the presence and earshot of Fitton’s dogwalkers.

Or Herc Shipwright and his smirking face.

 


	6. Board Game

 

The game belonged to Douglas, and he’d brought it to Carolyn’s upon Martin’s request that they spent the evening of his visit “just, you know…doing normal stuff. Like we used to do on layovers and delays. Nothing special.” Martin didn’t want a fuss made, Douglas thought, but he also suspected that his former captain genuinely missed MJN-style downtime. From descriptions he’d heard of Captain Loutre, the man was pleasant enough, but not much of a joker.

“This looks _brilliant_ , Douglas,” Arthur enthused, as he opened the box. “What do you have to do?”

Douglas took the game board from him and laid it out. “It’s a tube map,” he said, though he imagined even Arthur had recognised that much. “You travel around it by rolling the dice, and you’re dealt six of these souvenir cards which tell you which stations you have to visit.”

“Wow!”

Martin went straight for the rules booklet, which made Douglas grin. Once he’d relayed the rest of the rules in exact detail, the game got underway - and except for Arthur accidentally following Herc’s counter for three turns instead of working to his own agenda (“Sorry! Mum always says to keep close so I don’t get lost in London, that’s all!”) - they all picked it up quite well.

Somewhere toward the middle of the game, Martin picked up a hazard card in order to switch to the Circle line and said, as casually as if he were reading it from the little rectangular card in his hand, “So, anyway, Theresa and I are going to get married.”

A silence fell, broken only by Carolyn dropping the dice in surprise.

“You’re… Really?!” Arthur said eventually.

“ _Martin_!” Carolyn exclaimed. “Congratulations!”

“That’s wonderful news,” said Herc.

Douglas clapped him on the back. “Terrific.” He grinned. “But why did you choose to tell us in the middle of a board game? You’ve thrown us all off our trails now.”

“Ah, unless that was his plan all along!” Carolyn suggested.

Martin grinned. “I don’t know. I was nervous about telling you all, I suppose. So I just…waited until we were all relaxed.”

“I wasn’t relaxed,” Arthur piped up. “I’ve got to get all the way to _Pimlico_! Which sounds a bit like a cross between Pimm’s and Calico. It’s a shame I don’t really know what either of them are.”

“You orchestrated a board games night,” Douglas said, marvelling, “to create the exact atmosphere you needed to tell us about your engagement. Incredible.”

Martin cleared his throat. “Anyway, my hazard card: invite all your friends to your wedding. Roll an even number or they all say no.”

Arthur grabbed the dice hastily from the table. “It’s a six! It’s a six!”

********

As if they need more traditions, it becomes one. Douglas’s own engagement, Carolyn’s inheriting of the Birling empire, Theresa’s pregnancy and Herc’s all-clear from his cancer scare are all announced during rounds of the tube map board, or simply by the words, “I think we ought to play the London Game tonight.”

It’s an evening in November when Arthur makes the proposal, and Martin’s face lights up with more than expectation. “I was about to say the same thing,” he says.

“Oh, well you first!” Arthur says hastily.

“No, no, you go,” Martin insists.

“Mine’s only little,” says Arthur, once everyone is sitting around the table. “I just wanted to say that I qualified for the regional Crazy Golf Championships.”

“Wow, well done!” Martin gushes. “When are they?”

“The 24th. But let’s have yours.”

Martin looks across at Theresa. She smiles, encouragingly. Martin plants one hand on the top of the game box.

“The King of Liechtenstein has decreed that an airport be built in Vaduz,” he says. “And he’s looking for an airline to base itself there.”

This time, silence barely falls before it’s thrown to the wind by a stream of happy cheers.

 


End file.
